The election, ‘blogging’ and other concerns

By the time this publishes, the local election will be history. While I’m not embarrassed to say I’m voting against rather than for, I don’t feel particularly passionate about any of this year’s candidates. At least not in a positive way.

Considering that one of the most pressing issues in this year’s contest is public safety funding, I find it interesting that no candidate has visited the fire department to learn firsthand what its priorities are, and why it is stretched beyond its capacity, and what to do about it. Most of the career firefighters and all the volunteers live and vote in Fayette County. This is an important bloc.

As to the damage that has already been done, we face a long time healing. Not sure how four more years of sleaze and dishonesty are going to make that big a difference. I can easily distract myself with my grandbabies in Virginia.

Of one thing I’m pretty sure: It will take a runoff (Dec. 6) to decide who ultimately will reside in Peachtree City’s mayor’s office, and that’s an easy election to overlook. Traveling during these holiday months, it takes major dedication to cut family visits short to get home and vote. If it looks like that could happen to you, vote absentee. But whatever you do, vote.

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I hope you like the newly designed on-line presence of The Citizen. From one whose artistic abilities never got much past second grade, maybe my opinion carries less weight than I like to think it does, but I do think the Web site is spiffy.

I have one complaint. There are several sections on the Web site for people to weigh in on city- or county-wide discussions. Some of them are labeled “staff opinions” or “editorial opinions.” Then we have “columnists,” and “blogs.”

And after all these years as a columnist, I discover that I am referred to now as a “blog.” Or maybe “bloggist,” or “blogger,” or whatever a purveyor of blogs might be.

I don’t want to be a blog. Couldn’t I just go back to being a columnist?

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One of the hottest issues of this election is annexation of some footloose parcels of property on the west side of Peachtree City. Again, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Or to use an old country saying, I don’t have a dog in this fight.

But I do want to say something about density.

If you’ve traveled in rural England or in some European countries, you may have marveled at the sight of rolling green fields, copses of trees, dense hedgerows and fells. It’s astounding the amount of open countryside in these, the most densely populated nations of the Old World.

This is not an accident. From time to time, driving in the narrow roads that stitch the brown-green-gold quilt together, you come upon a row of perhaps a dozen tight gray stone houses. When I was growing up, we’d have called them row houses. Today, in the suburbs, they’d be called townhouses.

There are also tiny villages, houses snuggling together around the square to share warmth in a country where the weather is usually cold and damp. A pub in these little towns offers a sort of communal living room and the well provides the day’s water and gossip.

Where property is held and passed down to later generations, the residents of these houses likewise pass down the notion that the preservation of open space around them is worth living close together.

Density is not a four-letter word. If you have, say, a 50-acre tract and planned to put 20 houses on it, picture the 50 acres divided into 20 two-and-a-half acre lots, each bisected by an asphalt driveway, but not a bit of neighborliness.

Picture those same 20 homes built as townhouses arranged gracefully and close together in the center of the tract or off to one side, perhaps in a cluster of trees. One or two driveways connect them to the road, and a small shop located in the downstairs of one house would carry grocery essentials within an easy stroll for everybody.

Gosh, put a playground close by, with a pool and tennis court, and people might actually rediscover the meaning of neighborhood, of community, all surrounded by 35 acres of common green space and shading trees.

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A member of the fire department called to tell me that the women in the department were offended by something in the “Free Speech” section on The Citizen’s Web site. The gist of it was that they are not attractive.

You know, the courageous anonymous male (?) who wrote the remarks may be absolutely right. Ladies, I suspect you’ve been jumping out of bed and into your jumpsuit without putting on makeup and fixing your hair.

Now when a guy is up under the steering wheel of his wrecked car, smelling gasoline, or lying on the bedroom floor having severe chest pains, it’s important that the first face he sees is carefully made up and her hair still warm from the curling iron.

Morale – the patient’s – is vitally important in these circumstances. Perhaps the men in the department should shave and wear a shirt and tie to complement the women. Once you get some practice, you could probably be dressed within, oh, 20 or 25 minutes, don’t you think?

Those pesky numbers they give you in paramedic school, that irreparable brain damage occurs at about six minutes without air, and the one about bleeding to death in one minute – I mean, who knows? Did someone stand around with a stopwatch timing the guy on the floor?

But the main thing, girls, is that you look great when you get there.